FIrst trip to Capitoline Museum

Ok, so unfortunately this blog is really slow about loading pictures so I might not be able to post as many as I had previously planned.  In any case, I'm going to try really hard not to post ONLY boring archaeology pictures, as the majority of my photos are of that nature.

So, the first pic has a funny story to go along with it.  Aside from the fact that the fountain contains the original columns that were used in St. Peter's basilica, it also at one time functioned as a fort for Italian republican hero Garibaldi during the Risorgimento, especially during the battling of 1849 when Garibaldi his fellow Italian republicans were fighting the French (who were fighting on behalf of the Pope for control of Rome).  The fountain served as a wonderful fort, until one day the French turned on the water.

Yeah, maybe that was more funny in person?

Anyway, the second pic is, obviously and most famously, the Capitoline lupa (lupa = she-wolf in Latin).  The two infants depicted below, Romulus and Remus, are Renaissance embellishments while the wolf itself appears to be Etruscan.  This sculpture is one of the most famous of all in the Capitoline museum, and the emblem is still the symbol of Rome.  So there ya go.

The third picture is probably the one I'm most excited about and yet also it is probably the most boring.  The big square tufo stones are part of the original foundation of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the building that put ancient Rome on the map as far as architecture and shear scale/size of the buildings it was capable of producing.  The fourth picture is a plastic model of what the temple looked like, to give you an idea of how big it was.

So yeah, basically you should have an idea by now about what I'm doing most of the day: touring monuments and museums.  Oh and eating GREAT food!  The place where I am studying, which we refer to as the "centro," has two amazing old Italian women who love to cook and pile as much food on our plates as they can.  Also, hilariously, on the first day here when a few of the students expressed concern about the meals because they were vegetarian, the response they got was: "oh, so you want red meat or white meat?"

Ciao!

Ciao!